If Anyone Falls
by latessitrice
Summary: Darcy's not sure how she's ended up in the middle of nowhere pretending to be Barnes' wife. It's all Natasha's fault.
1. Chapter 1

**A birthday gift for Pollydoodles featuring fake marriage, mutual pining, and much tropey goodness.**

 **Chapter One**

Darcy stares around at the living room of her new home, wondering if all the remaining chintz in the world had been dumped into it. There were a lot of clashing florals happening, and they weren't even fashionable ones.

"So, do we get a redecoration budget?" she asks, poking at the nearest armchair. It's the height of grandma chic—she believes her grandma does, in fact, own this chair.

"No," Steve responds. He's in a stare off with Barnes, which Darcy thinks means they're having a silent conversation. It's hard to tell. They could just be brooding at each other. From what she's witnessed of them so far, brooding seems to be a hobby.

"Then the first time someone comes over it'll blow our cover, because there's no way I would willingly live with this lot."

Steve turns to give her a look she interprets as 'authoritative', and ignores anyway. "We have to be careful how we spend money—it's already cost enough to buy these safehouses."

"Yes, I'm sure this set you back millions." It's a pretty enough house, a little stone-built cottage with a slate roof, and she can't even muster the cheek to call it small after living in a New York studio for the past year. But Darcy knows that it was swooped up at a bargain price through an auction, from a buyer who was happy to take cash for a quick sale. It's a shame Darcy didn't have any say in the location: London was one thing, but the ass-end of Yorkshire is another.

She's not even sure how this makes sense. They're supposed to be in hiding, and yet Steve and Natasha have decided that two Americans suddenly moving into the area will somehow not stand out.

"It fit the parameters perfectly," Natasha replies, coming in from the hallway, brown wig covering her normally vibrant hair. "It's isolated, there's no known history of Hydra activity within 250 miles of here, and it has a reliable internet connection."

"And when the locals start talking about the strangers who just moved in?"

"They won't. There are a lot of holiday cottages and newcomers to the area. If you don't annoy them, they won't care." Natasha tosses something at Darcy, and she fumbles the catch, only just stopping it from hitting the floor. "Keys to your new Land Rover. You'll need it when the weather's bad."

Darcy examines the key chain. "When you say 'new', you mean 'old', don't you?"

"As the hills. Hope you enjoy the smell of wet dog."

"Ugh."

"And it's at least a two hour drive to the nearest IKEA."

"UGH."

"But only an hour to the supermarket!"

"Seriously, what's wrong with London? Nobody would look at us twice there! I could literally stand on a street corner banging on a pan yelling about shacking up with the Winter Soldier, and people would just pretend not to hear me!" Darcy notices, a moment too late, the way Barnes winces at her using his former code name. He slips from the room, but she can't follow him, because Natasha's still trying to be reasonable.

"Too much surveillance, and we can't rely on SHIELD or Stark technology anymore. Old-fashioned hiding out is the way to go."

"Fine. But I don't have to like it."

Steve has followed Barnes, and it turns out they're unloading the last of the stuff from the car they'd driven up in. Darcy stands on the doorstep, staring out across the valley below them. She has to admit the view is spectacular: rolling green hills bisected by crumbling stone walls, cresting to peaks around the edge of the valley. Streams meander through the landscape, glittering in the sunshine. There are sheep everywhere, and she's less thrilled about that, but the air is still and quiet. Peaceful.

She suspects that's another reason the cottage scored high on Natasha's list of requirements: Barnes needs to make up for about seventy years of lost peace, and this isolated corner of the countryside ought to deliver it rapidly. Personally, Darcy thinks she's going to be bored out of her skull, no matter how good the internet connection is.

Belongings and groceries unpacked, Steve and Natasha make a hasty exit. They've got a plane to catch to their own safehouses: one-time Avengers are now scattered around the world in hiding, paired up to protect each other and the rest of the team. Steve will be with Wanda, Natasha's on the run with Sharon, Sam has the dubious honor of babysitting Scott Lang, and Clint's gone back to his farm and family, because even Tony Stark isn't dick enough to give the location of that up.

And somehow Darcy, who isn't even an Avenger or involved in their little skirmish, has been called in to play house with Barnes.

"We need your skills," Natasha had said when she dropped out of the sky into Darcy's apartment. To which Darcy had questioned _what skills?_ People management, computers, and living in 21st century England, apparently.

Of course, Natasha hadn't told her the full story until after they'd arrived in Heathrow and started driving north instead of heading into London, by which time it was too late for Darcy to back out. Not only was she going to be living with Barnes, but they'd been set up with new identities and would be dwelling in the middle of frigging nowhere (a.k.a. the North Yorkshire Dales).

The best part—the reason Darcy is wearing shiny new jewelry on her left hand, forcibly wedged into place by Natasha—is the new identity involves her being married to Barnes. In fact, since Darcy Lewis already exists in UK government records, they've just added a husband, trusting that no one will ever suspect her of sheltering the former assassin.

"Not necessary!" Darcy had protested. "We could just live together."

"This makes you each other's next of kin. It could be important if anything happens."

If anything happens, Darcy is armed with a Wakandan-built taser, to go with Barnes' replacement arm, which is a more realistic-looking prosthetic than the last one. Apparently Tony Stark is the only person out there who knows that Barnes no longer has the Hydra-issued metal arm, and even he doesn't know about the generous upgrade. Barnes' most identifiable feature, apart from his thighs and dead-eyed stare, doesn't exist anymore.

The thighs, she can live with. They're almost as good a view as what's out the window. The stare, on the other hand, will take some getting used to. It's a weird feeling being married to man she's yet to have a conversation with. She wonders how he feels about their shared surname: Laithe, which Natasha had informed her was local dialect for barn.

Darcy's been too busy figuring out what supplies they have in the kitchen to explore the rest of the house. There are only two rooms downstairs, the living room at the front and the kitchen at the back. The stairs are steep when she eventually ventures up them, and narrow, which doesn't bode well for getting furniture up them if they ever do make it to IKEA. There are two doors when she gets to the top, and that immediately has her concerned. She pokes one open, and it's a bathroom, leaving her with a sinking feeling. Sure enough, the only remaining door leads into the sole bedroom.

It has amazing views across the valley—and one bed.

She whips out her phone to fire a text off to Natasha, before noticing that she has no coverage on her phone. None at all.

Darcy stomps her way back downstairs, just as Barnes comes through the front door.

"Did you look upstairs? I'm going to murder Nat!"

He stares at her, and his head twitches in what she thinks might be a shake. He does not reply verbally.

"Well, not only are we sharing a bedroom, but we're sharing a bed. Her specifications for a perfect house apparently didn't include two bedrooms. Or cellphone coverage! I mean, what if there's an emergency?"

"There's a phone." He points to the handset plugged into the wall. "And panic buttons all over the house. We press them, it alerts the team."

His voice is scratchy from disuse, but low and soft. It's a pleasant voice, all things considered. Darcy thinks he should use it more.

"Or—and here's a novel idea—we live somewhere we can call them from wherever we are, at any time, using a handheld device!"

Barnes shrugs. "I think we're going to be fine. I did a perimeter check—you can see for miles around the house, and the terrain's too rough to drive on for most of it. We can see, and hear, every car coming on the road. There's no way to set up an ambush, short of landing on the house in a helicopter."

"But that still leaves us with the issue of there only being one bed."

"I'll sleep on the sofa."

Darcy gestures expansively through the doorway into the living room, where there is an impressive collection of armchairs, but no actual sofa. "Good luck with that."

He follows the direction of her hands and frowns, which deepens into a glare. "You don't need to murder Natalia. I'll do it. I'll be more effective."

* * *

Bucky doesn't know what game Natalia is playing, but he struggles to believe this is a mistake or oversight. He sulks over it the whole time the girl—Darcy—is in the kitchen, preparing food, while he checks that was she says is true.

No, Natalia was here for days before they arrived, purchasing the property and ensuring it was habitable. She provided a list of the work she has done: installing a generator, so they have a source of electricity if the area suffers a power cut, making sure the phone is connected, and adding the security system. She must have slept in that bed, so she is well aware of the lack of other arrangements.

He doesn't doubt she will only return here when their ire has cooled—probably only if there is a dire need to do so.

Of the girl, Bucky isn't sure what to make of her. She talks a lot, even when he doesn't respond, and in anyone else it would become annoying, fast. Here, though, it fills what will be a perpetual hush. He suspects she will tire of his silence long before he tires of her words. He's going to have to dredge up the part of him that used to be a decent conversationalist.

There's a softness to her, and a candor he's not come across in a long time. His days have been filled with spies and soldiers, but she has none of that artifice surrounding her. Steve says she's helped save the world and is friends with Thor, one of the Avengers Bucky hasn't met yet. What he doesn't understand is why she's so willing to drop her life and come live in the back of beyond with him. Natalia claimed it's because she's a good person, but there has to be more to it than that.

Maybe that's a conversation he can strike up. He is married to the girl, after all. He ought to know this stuff.

* * *

So their first conversation wasn't exactly a meet-cute, but it's out of the way and didn't end in bloodshed. Except possibly for Natasha at an unspecified future date. But all told, Darcy thinks she's got this housewife business down. She cooks a meal for them and serves it on the little table in the living room. Barnes inhales it, then goes searching in the kitchen for more food. Apparently she's vastly underestimated an appropriate portion size for him.

"When the recipe says it serves four people, instead of halving it, I'll just cook the whole thing from now on," she says as he retrieves the rest of the chicken from the refrigerator and digs in. He nods and rips a wing off the carcass.

That leaves the awkwardness of night falling, and the thorny issue of sleeping quarters. Darcy does the gallant thing, and goes to bed at an earlier than normal hour while Barnes does another perimeter check, hoping to be asleep before he comes to bed. Because, hey, it's been a long day with all the traveling and crossing time zones and stuff.

She's shared beds with people on a platonic basis before, even men. It's no big deal. Of course, usually the men were friends, or Erik. Instead, Darcy's looking at spending the night—several nights—next to an ex-assassin she'd only met hours earlier. Steve's assured her he won't harm her—he had some remedial therapy in Wakanda while they were fixing his arm—but he's still not her ideal bed partner.

It's also only a queen. Barnes looks broad enough to fill the bed on his own.

In the pajamas which provide the most skin coverage, she claims the right hand side, and curls up to face the wall. It's actually a little eerie how quiet the house is, without even the sound of traffic outside. If she strains, she can probably make out sheep bleating in the distance.

She drifts, unable to properly tumble into sleep, until she hears the front door open and close, then Barnes' footsteps on the stairs. He washes up in the bathroom before entering the bedroom.

There's the sound of cloth hitting floor, and the covers shift as he pulls them back and climbs in the bed. Darcy's ninety-percent sure he's just stripped off and dumped his clothes on the floor (mental note to buy a laundry hamper), rather than putting any version of sleepwear on. She is so far from relaxed it's not funny, but if Barnes realizes she's still awake, he doesn't say a word. His shoulder brushes against her back—yep, this bed is not wide enough for the both of them—before he shifts onto his side as well.

This is fine. Absolutely fine. A sofa-bed for one of them to sleep on is totally not a priority or anything.

Barnes' breathing is slow and even almost immediately, but that doesn't count for anything. Darcy also realizes, possibly too late, that he has zero reason to trust her. It won't even have been Steve to vouch for her, because she'd met Cap a grand total of twice before today. Barnes is relying on Nat's word, and even Darcy isn't sure how much stock to place in that. She'd better not make any sudden movements in the night, just in case.

Her cheerful thoughts keep her awake longer than can be healthy, and it's only exhaustion which finally sucks her under.

It's the tight arm around her waist which wakes her in the morning, and the baking hot body pressed against her back.

* * *

 **I think we can all see where this is going.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This has taken a while, but it's a pretty long chapter, so enjoy!**

* * *

Darcy does her best to extricate herself gently—she needs to use the bathroom and doesn't especially want to face Barnes after he's spooned her for the first time—but it's his left arm wrapped around her, and it just won't budge. It's not made of metal anymore, or so Natasha says, but it may as well be stone for all the luck she's having wriggling out of his grip. She doesn't want to wake him, but right now her options are looking like it's going to be a competition between what can hold out longer: Barnes' slumber, or Darcy's bladder.

She's not going to win this, so she not-so-subtly jabs him in the ribs with her elbow.

He grunts, right into her ear, and shifts to pull her even tighter to him, until there's something digging into her back and everything is worse than it already was.

She feels the moment he wakes up, his regular breathing stilling and the hand spanning her belly forming a fist. Then he's shoving himself away from her.

Darcy does the only dignified thing, and flees into the bathroom. It's only when she's shut herself in there, making a noisy pantomime of washing and brushing her teeth, that she realizes she'd thought about it being the _first_ time Barnes spooned her instead of being, oh, the _only_ time it's ever going to happen.

She hears the stairs creak under heavy footsteps, and waits until Barnes has made it downstairs before opening the door and creeping back into the bedroom. She gathers clean clothes from her suitcase, and returns to the bathroom for a shower.

The water pressure could be better—and will be, once she's got a few spare parts and had a tinker with the plumbing—but there are no ominous noises when she turns the shower on, the water's clear, and it runs hot longer than she expected. By the time she's out, dressed, and toweled her hair dry, the smell of frying food is wafting up the stairs.

Now she's going to do what she does best, and pretend to be oblivious.

"I looked up the directions to IKEA," she announces as she enters the kitchen, "and Nat's right, it's a long trip, but it's important we get a futon, so that should be top of our agenda."

Barnes frowns at her, although it's not so different from his usual permascowl so she's not sure what she's supposed to divine from it. However, he seems to take her cue on avoiding the spooning situation, and tilts a frying pan in her direction with a questioning glance.

"Everything but the bacon, please," she says, retrieving a plate from the cupboard. Though bacon is one of her favorite things ever, maybe if she tries to get right with God he'll stop terrible things happening to her. Terrible things like having six feet of toned muscle cuddling her at night. She's pretty sure that having the rest of the food cooked in bacon grease doesn't exactly qualify it as kosher, but her sacrifice has to count for something, right?

"I'm not sure what IKEA is," Barnes admits when they're sat at the tiny table to eat. Darcy gapes at him over a forkful of egg. Point the first in his favor, he can cook—or at least fry stuff.

"Man, I wish I could say you're in for a treat, but honestly, it's kind of a love-it-or-hate-it deal, and I'm not sure which side of the line you're going to fall on." Barnes just stares at her, waiting for more information. "It's a Swedish furniture store, only it's way more than that. You get to walk around looking at pretend rooms and sitting on the furniture to try it out, and there will be hotdogs too. Everything has ridiculous Swedish names that no one can pronounce, except Thor—have you met Thor?" He shakes his head. "Well, he's the best person to go to IKEA with, because he translates the names and spends half his time bouncing on the beds like a toddler. But even if you hate it, they sell sofa-beds, so you won't hate it too much."

Barnes takes all of this information in with a raised eyebrow and, eventually, a slight incline of his head that she thinks is a nod. He seems to be more interested in the remnants on her plate, which she offers to him. Then he disappears to shower, and she washes the dishes up, wondering what the hell they're going to talk about on the four hour round trip.

* * *

Bucky's decided that the solid night's sleep he'd had was the result of the near-absolute silence around his new digs, compared to the constant noise of his little apartment in Bucharest, or all the flophouses he'd slept in on the run. Most of those had been in the noisy hearts of cities, and he'd always slept with half an eye open, waiting to be stumbled upon. For the first time in a while, he isn't expecting anyone to be looking for him—certainly not round here—so he'd been able to rest his head properly. The lumpy mattress couldn't have been a contributing factor, and he's absolutely certain that his new bed companion and sometime-body-pillow had nothing to do with it. Nothing.

In fact, he suspects that half the reason they'd woken up in the position they had was because it had prevented her from kicking or elbowing him in her sleep, since he has a vivid memory of taking a foot to the shin. So it was only self-preservation.

Still, he thinks as the shower water begins to cool, he's not sure this warrants such a lengthy trip to buy a new bed. Furniture nowadays is easier to get hold of—though apparently more disposable too—but he'd be fine with a mattress on the floor. He's slept on worse; a new mattress would be a luxury in comparison.

The house is a luxury, even if most people wouldn't think of it as such, one Steve has gifted him with. It's the closest thing to a home, to a sanctuary, he's had in years. And though he'd like to pretend that he'd prefer to be alone, to get as much as peace as he can, he's been left with company. Either Steve or Romanoff—probably Romanoff—has recognized that too long alone will only make him maudlin. He needs someone to help him navigate the parts of the 21st century he still hasn't got the hang of yet, but also to make sure he's not driven to hanging out with sheep.

Lewis is waiting for him in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, a screwdriver clamped between her teeth as she stares down at the carcass of the telephone socket, which is scattered across a side table.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

She removes the screwdriver and deposits it onto the table, picking up fragments the socket instead. "We need to be able to communicate with the others without being monitored. I'm working on it."

He glances down at the pieces. "You know how to do that?"

"Sure. I come from a long line of engineers, and despite my best attempts to ignore the truth—up to and including picking my college major—working with Jane showed me that I cannot escape who I am at heart." Her fingers move quickly, reconfiguring pieces of plastic and metal.

"Jane?"

"Foster. She's an astrophysicist and I used to be her intern. It involved a lot of making and fixing equipment."

"Oh. Okay."

She stops what she's doing. "Well, priorities. We should get on the road, I can finish that when we get back. I was just checking I didn't need to pick up any parts while we were out." She snatches the car keys up from a hook beside the door and steps away, shoving a road atlas towards him. "How good are you at navigating?"

"Why am I navigating?"

"Because I'm driving and I can't do both."

"Why are _you_ driving?"

"When was the last time you drove?" she calls over her shoulder as she opens the front door and trots down the steps towards the Land Rover. "I bet you don't even have a valid license anymore."

She's buckled in and has the engine going before he can protest.

* * *

"I knew we should have turned left back there!" Barnes grumbles.

"Well if you knew that, you should have told me, but you didn't." Darcy frowns at the string of potholes masquerading as a road they are traveling down. It looks exactly the same as every other road they've been on over the past hour, and for all she knows they've been going in circles. They've been on the road for two hours, and IKEA is nowhere in sight. Pretty much nothing is anywhere in sight, except more fields, rolling as far as the horizon.

"What's the point? You ignore me when I give you instructions."

Darcy takes a deep breath, regretting it when she gets a lungful of wet dog aroma. "Because you really don't sound that confident when you do it."

"I've got plenty of confidence in what I'm telling you to do—it's your driving that worries me."

"What we need round here is speed, and it's not like we're going to hit another car—"

She slams on the brakes, and the Land Rover comes to a stuttering halt. Thirty feet ahead, sheep are loitering in the potholes. "You have got to be kidding me." She beeps the horn, and the sheep don't even look in their direction. They continue sauntering across the road—all except the one in the middle, which appears to have decided to have a lie down on the asphalt.

"Great," Barnes mutters.

"Can you get out and like," she motions with her hands, "herd them?"

"No, I cannot. But you can."

"Why me?"

"It was your idea."

"Except you're way more menacing than me!" As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she blanches, realizing how badly he might take them. He does nothing except raise an eyebrow at her in response, but Darcy unclips her seatbelt and clambers out of her seat anyway. "If they eat me I'm tattling on you to Steve."

They're bigger than she expected them to be as she approaches gingerly, and even though she was mostly joking about them eating her, up close she realizes she doesn't know if sheep are likely to attack people. In the fields, from far away, they'd looked like soft little clouds, but now they've all fixed her with beady eyes, and they don't look soft at all.

Then they all start trotting towards her.

Darcy backs up, and they keep moving. She stops, holding her hands out, and they stop too, but they're still staring at her in that unblinking, unnerving way. She takes an experimental step backwards and they follow.

"Hey Barnes," she yells, "make sure that door's open."

She hears the squeak of the window rolling down. "Why?"

"Because I'm about to make a run for it."

And she does, not looking back, but she hears the clatter of hooves on the road too close behind her. She reaches the Land Rover and yanks the driver's side door open, only to find Barnes sat in the driver's chair.

"What are—?" she begins, but something brushes against her leg, and she propels herself up into his lap, slamming the door behind her. "Drive!" she yells, clambering over him and into the passenger seat. Barnes shrugs and puts his foot down, the Land Rover lurching forwards now the road is clear of sheep.

"That wouldn't have been my strategy," he comments, "but it worked."

"It wasn't my strategy either!" In the rearview mirror, she can see the sheep chasing the Land Rover, but dropping back and losing interest when it speeds away from them. "No one ever told me those things are scary. And stinky."

"They were only curious."

"About what I taste like? Sure! And how come you're driving now?"

"Because I decided you get to navigate for a while."

He's concentrating on the road, so Darcy fishes the road atlas out from underneath her butt and flips it open to what she hopes will be the relevant page. "Where are we?" He shrugs, and Darcy resists the urge to poke him—he might throw her out and leave her to the mercies of the sheep.

It takes a few minutes for her to figure out their location: Google Maps isn't working on her phone, thanks to the complete lack of service, but she triangulates using landmarks ("That hill is Pen-y-ghent, right, that's what that sign said?") and soon has them on the road towards their house. She's given up on trying to get them to IKEA for today, not when it will take them four hours in total just to get there. By the time they'd get home and start putting the bed together…Darcy's decided they can share a bed for one more night. When she'd broached the idea to Barnes, he'd nodded.

"Shall we head to Hawes and get some more food?" she asks, running her finger up the map, tracing the road which will lead to the little town. It's the closest place with shops to where they live, and based on how Barnes has decimated the contents of the refrigerator already, they need to stock up.

He shrugs and follows her directions. Darcy has to admit his driving is smoother than hers—she's never got used to driving stick—and he's going at a speed she's happy with. For his part, he's trusting her instructions, and they're soon entering the outskirts of the town without any further diversions.

Hawes is what Darcy would consider a village, despite being the largest town in the Dales. It consists of one main road lined with stone-built houses, and smaller streets spidering away. Most of the buildings belie the fact that it's a tourist hot spot, little gift shops nestled next to cafes and guest houses. The hills rise around the town, the sparse grass turning to fragmented stone the higher they rise.

They find a parking spot in front of a convenience store, but Barnes leaves the engine idling.

"Aren't you coming in?" she asks.

He opens his mouth, clenches his jaw, and closes it again, shaking his head.

"But I don't know what you like to eat."

"I'll eat anything," he replies with a shrug. "I just don't think it's a good idea."

"We're going to be coming here a lot, and you can't skulk in the car all the time. It'll make people suspicious, and it'll undermine our cover story. I won't be a newlywed out with her hubby, I'll be that weird American girl who says she just got married but is clearly delusional."

He huffs, but after a moment of considering her words and chewing on his lower lip—Darcy realizes with a start that she's staring at him doing so—he gives a reluctant nod. "Alright."

"I'll let you choose some candy!" she promises as she swings herself out of the car and onto the sidewalk.

She grabs a basket when they're inside, dangling it from one hand, and feels skin brush the other hand. She glances down to see Barnes is trying to grab her fingers.

"Dude, I am not holding your hand in the store."

"Too bloody right," an old lady says as she shuffles past. "I know he's trying to be sweet, love, and he gets points for trying, but you'll only block the aisles."

Darcy stares wide eyed at the retreating figure of the woman in her purple coat, who now seems more interested in examining the dates on milk cartons, while Barnes' yanks his hand away like he's been burned.

"Sorry," Darcy calls after her. "He can be a bit touchy-feely, but I'm not really into public displays of affection." Barnes silently takes the basket from her and starts adding dairy items to it.

"Thank fuck for that, if you don't mind me saying. Can't be doing with people hanging off each other." She sneaks a sideways glance at Barnes. "Although I wouldn't blame you for getting a bit touchy-feely with him whatever chance you got."

Darcy gapes at her as she disappears round the corner, and when she turns back to Barnes, his cheeks are distinctly pink. He doesn't say anything, but silently keeps adding stuff to the basket. By the time they reach the register, the old lady has disappeared, and the teenage girl behind the counter is entirely disinterested in them. The couple in the line behind them have a distinctly London twang to their accents, so Darcy figures that no one cares about a pair of Americans showing up. Here, they're just tourists. Not local, but nothing out of the ordinary either.

"Well," Darcy says when they're back in the Land Rover. "She was a character."

Barnes grunts his agreement.

"People in Britain generally aren't that keen on public displays of affection," she continues. "Or emotion at all."

"So I gather," he mutters. There's a pause before he carries on. "I thought it would make it obvious that we were together if…"

"Nah, we went in there together. People draw their own conclusions. Nat said we should only provide information if people ask for it, otherwise we look weird and overeager." The advice has probably been given in full knowledge of Darcy's tendency to babble when nervous.

"Right."

"You know, you could maybe take the cap off next time. If you tied your hair back, into like a man bun or something, then with the beard you'd just look like a hipster."

She sees him mouth 'man bun', and his incredulous look stops her from explaining any further.

He's silent for the rest of the journey home, and the first thing Darcy does when they get back is draw up a meal plan to stick on the refrigerator. The logic is that it'll be easier to buy enough groceries to keep Barnes fed that way, and her next brainwave is to look up the nearest supermarket. She's amazed to find they'll deliver even this far out into the sticks, for a charge, and sets up a weekly delivery.

That leads her to the IKEA website, browsing through and drawing up a list of things she thinks they'll need. It would've been more fun to wing it as they went round the store, but she's got the feeling Barnes will want to head straight to the warehouse and pick up what they want instead.

"Hey, can you think of anything else we'll need?" she calls from her perch on the armchair. Barnes sticks his head through the door.

"What are you doing?"

She angles the screen of the laptop so he can see, and he squints at the screen.

"You can order it and they'll deliver it?" he asks, distracted and apparently amazed by the banner at the top of the page.

"Uh…yeah. Most companies do that nowadays."

"So we don't have to go to the store after all? That's perfect."

"No, that's not the plan at all! They won't deliver hot dogs to us." Darcy's aware she might be whining.

He crosses the room to look at her list. "We won't fit all of this into the car."

"Crap." He's right. She sighs. "Alright, I'll get them to deliver it."

"How are you paying for this anyway?"

"I hacked one of Stark's accounts, got myself some card details. This is all getting logged as expenses, no one will bat an eyelid."

He looks hesitant, but Darcy's got it handled. She's got software running in the background which will alert her if anyone else runs queries on the account.

"Fine. No, I don't need anything else." He wanders away, and she spots him with her screwdriver, installing a pull-up bar in the hallway.

* * *

Lewis is hesitant to let Bucky know over dinner that, since their furniture is being delivered, it's going to take five days for the sofa bed to arrive. The implications are obvious, and she'd rather stare at her food than look at him.

For his part, he feigns nonchalance, but tonight he's the first one to bed, while she sits downstairs and taps away at her computer. It occurs to him that he could do with sleepwear, but he didn't know he'd be sharing a bed so didn't bother to bring any. Tonight he rummages through his things to find a vest to put on, so at least he isn't only in his underwear.

He closes his eyes but doesn't sleep. He's probably too well-rested from the night before, but he also knows there's not much point getting comfortable until she comes up to bed. He listens for her steps on the stairs: they're light, but the third step up creaks unless you stand on the very edge, and she hasn't figured that out yet. She spends a few minutes in the bathroom, and he makes sure he's on his side—facing away from her side of the bed—with his eyes closed when she comes in.

Turns out, it makes no difference what position he's in when he goes to sleep. When he wakes up, he's wrapped around her again, his fingers dangerously close to the underside of…well. His thoughts skitter away from what he was _almost_ touching, and he peels himself away from her as gently as he can, leaving her to sleep a while longer.

It's a hell of a long time since he's held another human being like that. The last person was probably Stevie, and that was in the interests of not freezing to death during the winter. Lewis is warm—he can still feel the line of her body against his—but he's pretty sure it's not her body heat that he's seeking in the middle of the night.

She's pretty. It's hard not to notice that: not when he spent all day yesterday in a car with her, those big, expressive eyes constantly turned to him, her full mouth moving as she spoke or smiled. She's petite, and soft, and there was a moment yesterday, when she was straddling him in the car fleeing from killer sheep, that he'd felt a surge of attraction.

It's not helpful at all. He has no idea how long they'll be here, but life will be a lot easier without complications like that.

He has things he intends to say to Natalia the next time they meet.

If Lewis is aware of him holding her during the night, she doesn't mention it. She spends her morning fixing the telephone socket, and in the absence of anything better to do, he parks himself on one of the lower steps to watch. She talks to fill the silence, explaining what she's doing and then moving onto other topics: her work with Doctor Foster, and anecdotes about Thor.

"I think you'd like him," she says. "Mainly because everyone likes Thor, except for villains, and you're not a villain so of course you will."

"Am I not?"

"Not what?"

"A villain."

She looks up from the piece she is screwing to frown at him. "Of course not. Unless you think Steve is a villain too. Or Natasha. The world likes to call them that right now, but they're not. They're heroes."

"They don't have my past," he mutters.

"Natasha kind of does," she replies, returning to her work. "But she's spent a long time trying to make up for that. You were a hero before everything else," she waves a hand vaguely, "and anything that you did while brainwashed totally doesn't count."

"It's that simple?"

"It's that simple," she repeats firmly. "So you and Thor would be buds, I know it. Right, all done." She steps back from fixing the final screw into place. "Our phone line is now more secure than the White House's. No one will even know we're using it. Next stop: the shower."

The water pressure improves considerably when Darcy's finished.

They fall into a routine, over the following days, where Darcy finds a project and Bucky acts as her assistant. Even the washing machine gets an upgrade, a loose bearing replaced following a delivery from a hardware store. They only leave the house once, and that's to go back into Hawes to pick up more perishables. The lady in the purple coat isn't in, for which Bucky's thankful, and he doesn't make any further attempts to hold Darcy's hand.

He's still holding her in his sleep.

He always wakes up first, so she has no idea. About that or the fact that he's taken to calling her Darcy in his head. He's not sure when she transitioned from Lewis, but she still does the lion's share of talking and he never calls her much of anything, so if she has an opinion about the familiarity, he'll never hear it.

"Aw, rats," he hears Darcy say after her phone chimes, and then she calls out to him. "They canceled the IKEA delivery!"

He heads into the living room to find her sprawled in her favorite armchair. "Did they say why?"

"Yeah, the sofa bed is out of stock and might be for a while. I can order a different one, I guess."

"Leave it," he hears himself say. "We're doing okay, aren't we?"

He's pretty sure she tries to mask her surprise, and there are other emotions mixed in there, but he'd rather not examine them. He doesn't even want to examine his own.

* * *

Darcy's fixed everything she can fix, and she's fed up of rattling round the house, so she finds herself another project: tackling the garden and the horrendous chintz overload.

She's never gardened before, but she introduces herself to the owner of a store in Hawes who's happy to flog her a ton of equipment: shovels and trowels, forks and compost. She lugs it all home in the Land Rover and Barnes seems happy to work alongside her, tackling the rampant overgrowth that is the little plot of land sloping up behind the house. She's not sure what she wants to plant, until the man in the store sells her potted herbs to plant out.

She also combs the gift and antique stores for ways to transform the house, replacing the hideous chairs and storing the existing ones down in the old coal cellar beneath the house. It keeps her entertained when the weather's not so good. She also amasses a ton of second-hand books for those days. When the weather is good, they go out walking, exploring the hills with a map Darcy's bought. So long as they stay away from sheep, it's cool. Barnes likes to go for a run every morning, so when she wakes up his side of the bed is already cold, and that first morning is never, ever discussed.

On the days it rains and he can't go for his run, he finds ways to exercise around the house, the pull-up bar a favorite. Not his favorite: Darcy's. She's discovered that if she sits at a particular angle on her chair in the living room, the door has bowed enough that there's a gap she can watch him through. He's oblivious, stripping off his shirt before he begins, pulling himself up until his chin is level with the bar using only his flesh arm. Muscles contract as he moves: biceps, pecs, abs, glistening as he works up a sheen.

It's not the only time she finds herself watching him: when they're out in the garden digging, and she internally laments how messy she looks beside him, or when they're up a hillside searching for a stream marked on the map, and she's looking at his face rather than the landscape.

When she wakes up one morning and is disappointed that it's not raining, so he won't be doing any pull-ups, Darcy realizes she has it bad.


End file.
